Source: http://www.dailybreeze.com, July 23, 2016
By: Sandy Mazza
Workers have only just begun removing millions of tons of oil-caked soil left buried for decades in the yards of Carson’s Carousel tract, but a long-awaited financial settlement for the pain and suffering of residents likely will be disbursed before Christmas.
The final payout from two companies deemed responsible for the mess will be $120 million for emotional and physical turmoil, according to an agreement between attorneys reached Friday.
The deal comes after more than a year of legal wrangling between Shell Oil Co., which operated the former oil-tank storage farm on the site, and Dole Food Co., which bought the tract’s developer, Barclay Hollander Corp., and was named responsible for cleaning the property by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board in 2015.
The board found fault in a contract Barclay Hollander signed in the 1960s with Shell to clean up the oil before building homes. Instead, the company just knocked down old tanks and covered the concrete and waste oil with a few feet of clean dirt, according to court documents.
Shell and Dole are still battling in court over who will ultimately pay for the $146 million cleanup being done in groups of eight homes at a time and expected to last six years.
Shell, which was ordered to clean the property in 2011 — three years after the underground dump was discovered during routine testing — 7 Comments in late 2014. Hundreds of current and former residents have claimed damages for anxiety, cancerous tumors, asthma, blood disorders and other ailments related to longtime exposure to benzene and other chemicals in petroleum products.
On Friday, Dole agreed to pay $30 million to settle resident claims for emotional and physical damages. At least 95 percent of plaintiffs must sign off on that amount before it can be disbursed, but the agreement clears the way for attorneys to release Shell’s $90 million payout.
“The developer-defendants have agreed to settlement of their claims for additional payment of $30 million above and beyond” the Shell settlement, said Bob Finnerty, an attorney with the Girardi & Keese law firm, which represents 1,491 current and former residents in the mass tort claim. “I forwarded to the city what I hope to be the final draft of that agreement (Friday). I’m optimistic that they will get money in 90 days.”
City Attorney Sunny Soltani was not available for comment on Friday, but she promised residents at a City Council meeting this week to fast-track the process and ensure that they are well-represented. The city joined the lawsuit in 2012, hoping to help speed up the process.
Barbara Post, president of the Carousel Homeowners Association, told Carson council members Tuesday that she’s skeptical attorneys will maximize the compensation for residents who have suffered the most.
“There is a distinct distrust of our (Girardi & Keese) attorneys by the Carousel residents,” Post said. “We’re sharing this (settlement) with people across the street who have no contamination from Shell Oil, yet we’re told we have to give them something.
“So we’re sharing this with people who have not gone through what we’ve gone through, will not be going through what we’ve gone through. They do not have the same type of illnesses and deaths. They didn’t have it oozing up in their yards like we have.”
Finnerty said attorneys will take 40 percent of the settlement, which is more than the 33 percent Post said she was originally told.
Once the city signs off on the deal, attorneys can authorize a court-appointed “special master,” a retired appellate justice with expertise in mediation and arbitration, to determine how much each plaintiff receives in damages, Finnerty said.
Residents all have to sign off on the additional $30 million settlement before it can be paid out, but the special master will determine settlement amounts for each person using the full $120 million figure, Finnerty said.
“We are very happy with our ability to actually get them these settlements in these amounts,” Finnerty said.
Individual awards will be decided based on the extent of emotional and physical damage suffered.
However, the ongoing cleanup is still taking its toll, Post said.
In May, work began excavating soil and replacing it with uncontaminated dirt at the first cluster of homes in the tract. Affected residents were relocated to a hotel while a tall green temporary fence walled off the construction work from the rest of the neighborhood. Inside the fence, backhoes removed 5 to 10 feet of dirt, and new soil was trucked in to replace it. Shell is providing landscaping and a new paint job for residents.
But the work, originally expected to take three months per cluster, is running more than a month behind schedule, said Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board spokesman Samuel Unger.
“The water board’s major concern is the productivity at this point. The pace of the excavation is taking longer than expected,” Unger said. “I think the challenges of working in such a confined space have proven to be more difficult than we anticipated.
“I think an analysis will have to be done after this first cluster is finished. The water board will meet with the responsible parties and the contractors to see what improvement can be made.”
Odors and other negative effects have been minimal, though work had to be temporarily stopped at least once when the smell of oil became overpowering.
“I happened to take a peek in there, and I was horrified to see 10 homes dug 5 to 10 feet down right up to their foundation,” Post said. “You have no idea the cancer that’s in that tract. I started mapping it out and I stopped. I just cried. I thought, I cannot believe this has happened to the Carousel.
“Our latest case of cancer is a 14-year-old girl who spent her birthday in Children’s Hospital. They have no insurance. We have other people in the tract who can’t make their mortgages or buy medication. They need the money and we need the delays to stop.”